1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the ability to transfer information saved in folders and more particularly to an improved system that provides an automatic transfer of e-mail folders from one user to another user.
2. Description of the Related Art
Historically, information was passed by “criers” who would travel from town to town and spread news and information orally. With the advent of regular postal delivery systems and an increasing literate society, written letters became the predominant means of communication. In turn, modern technology has placed e-mail as the favored instrument for communicating the written word. The term e-mail (or electronic mail) simply comprises the transmission of messages by computer from one person to another. Messages are generally saved until the recipient chooses to read them.
In addition, most advanced e-mail systems such as Lotus Notes mail available from Lotus Corp. Cambridge Mass., USA, provide the ability to store e-mail messages in “Folders”. Folders are subdirectories within a computer storage system. Directories are generally areas on a storage disk where the names and locations of files are stored. Folders are a way of logically classifying files and are generally represented as tree structures or boxes within boxes. Folders allow e-mail to be stored in logical files so that the e-mail can be easily retrieved using such logical organization.
However, a problem exists when a user accumulates a large volume of e-mail messages and folders which need to be transferred to another user. Systems such as Lotus Notes mail do not allow the transfer of folders and their content to another Lotus Notes user mail file automatically. More specifically, e-mail systems do not allow two mail files to be opened simultaneously because each mail file requires a separate password/identification to be in effect while it is open and, for security reasons, only one user identification can be in effect at one time. Therefore, such folders must be transferred manually. The impact on time and productivity of such a manual process is substantial. For example, when a user leaves his/her current assignment and someone else has to take over, they need to transfer specific—if not all—mail folders to the new person in charge. To transfer the folders manually, the user has to create these folders in their mail file, copy the e-mails from the previous user and paste them in his/her mail file. Then the user must select the pasted e-mails, and move them to the appropriate folder in their mail file. It is common for a single user to have over 100 folders and such a volume of folders may take many days to manually transfer. Since the frequency of employees changing jobs or assignments is high in most companies, moving e-mail folders from one user to another has a big impact. The invention described below avoids this manual process and provides an automated secure system to transfer such e-mail folders.